


The Harlem Club Musicians

by PatchworkPoltergeist



Category: Die Bremer Stadtmusikanten | The Town Musicians of Bremen (Fairy Tale), Original Work
Genre: Allegory, Fairy Tale Retellings, Gen, Period-Typical Racism, times is hard everywhere
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-09
Updated: 2020-06-09
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:13:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24629107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PatchworkPoltergeist/pseuds/PatchworkPoltergeist
Summary: A retelling of The Bremen Town Musicians and a beast fable recounting the African American Great Migration of the early 20th century, the blues, and the annoying nature of hardship.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3





	The Harlem Club Musicians

It happened a couple dozen years into the new century.  
  
A Thoroughbred was on his way to the racetrack, sucking on a sugar cube and listening to the bird choirs greet the sun. About a mile down the road, he heard someone else singing, too, but it didn’t sound anything like the choir. It had a harsh sound, rough on the edges and mournful in the center, and the words had no jubilation. Sounded ugly. Sounded sad. But it sounded good, too.  
  
He followed the song to a little acre of land, where he discovered a Mule dragging a plow behind her and singing what folks now call The Blues.  
  
“Cousin!” he called out. “Cousin, it’s a beautiful morning! How come you don’t sing something happier? Maybe something we can all dance to?”  
  
“Yeah, and what do I have to be happy about?” asked the Mule. “I've only seen sunrise ‘cause I’ve been working since sunset. I got a busted knee, a bad cough, and I’ve been dragging this plow day in and day out for twenty years without so much as a raise from the Bosses. Not even a Christmas bonus. I’m tired and times is hard, Thoroughbred. Times is hard.”  
  
“Mm, can’t argue with you there.” Thoroughbred nodded to himself. “Just last week, the Bosses only gave me five sugar cubes yesterday instead of seven. But cheer up, cousin.  
It’s a brand new century, and you got a nice voice. Plow your fields and sing something happy.”  
  
The Mule looked up. “New century? Since when?”  
  
“For a while, now.”  
  
“Looks just like the old one.” It seemed to the Mule that a new century ought to have some newness to it. She’d come to be sick and tired of looking at these forty acres all day.  
  
Come to think of it, she was sick of the plow too, and never eating enough, and the Bosses always yelling at her. She was tired of Bosses and tired of being tired.  
  
“I’ve had enough of hardship,” she said, and as she said it, the Mule got an idea. “I think…I think maybe it’s time I go.”  
  
The horse laughed like that was just the funniest thing. “Girl, please. Where’s an old busted mule like you gonna go?”  
  
The Mule had to think on that a moment. “Someplace up North, I think. Where the summers ain’t so harsh.” She tilted her long ears towards the Bosses’ house, and the music coming from their radio.  
  
The latest hit from The Robbers Three swirled over the field, calling just for her. She thought it might be nice to be on the radio. “To Harlem.” Just thinking about it made her smile.  
  
And with that, she cast off her yoke, wrote the Bosses her resignation letter, and got her best hat.  
  
The Thoroughbred trotted along the other side of the fence calling, “Now, hold up, cousin! Singing for yourself is one thing, but you’re a Mule, and Harlem’s something else. You’re good and all, but you’re a long way from Robbers Three good.”  
  
The Mule snorted and picked up her pace. “Robbers Three can’t do nothing I can’t do. They sing. I sing. What’s the difference?” Besides, between the lead singer going solo and the pianist’s catnip problem, the band just didn’t have the same kick anymore.  
  
“Be reasonable, Mule. You and me, we worked in this town some twenty years now, and things are just fine.” The Thoroughbred smiled at her, feeling the sunshine in his glossy coat. “I mean, I never had a problem.”  
  
“Maybe so.” She nodded the shiny scars along her back. “But you ain’t no Mule, neither.”  
  
Down on the road she went.  
  


* * *

  
The road to Harlem, the Mule soon realized, was hungry. Earning bread in the field meant a guaranteed (but meager) meal at the end of the day, true. But on the road, she never knew for certain if she’d be going to bed hungry or not. Hardship nipped at her heels, but she paid it no mind. “If it gets me to Harlem, it’s worth it. There’ll be none of this in Harlem.”  
  
Still, when she sang for her supper in the bars at night and on the sidewalks for breakfast, nobody tried to take her bread away. She kept what was hers, and that was something, at least.  
  
Trouble was, she just knew a handful of songs. After a while, her music spread ahead of her. Animals farther North knew all the words to her songs already and weren’t about to keep their criticisms to themselves.  
  
“Yo, learn a new song!” called a Cat in the audience.  
  
“Get outta here with that old mess,” crowed the Rooster. “We want something original.”  
  
The club owner agreed. He was big, broad-shouldered Lion with a wide-brim Stetson hat and a wider ego. He paid the Mule a shorter wage and told her, “That ol’ braying is cute and all, but it’ll never fly in Harlem.” He slicked back his nappy mane, adjusted his hat, and went back to his card game, adding, “And ‘less y’all get something original, y’all ain’t gon’ fly here, neither.”  
  
Downhearted and discouraged, the Mule took her dinner on the far side of the bar, near the cobwebs. She’d just started on her soup, when she thought she heard somebody whispering. No, she felt sure of it.   
  
The soft voice in her ear rumbled deep and older than the earth. Or at least older than the town. “Aw, don’t you mind Billy Lion. He just likes to hear himself talk. I been watching that fool for years, and trust me, you don’t want none of that story. He’s a minor character, anyway.”  
  
A steady, soulful bassline thrummed in the background, jamming to the bar’s background chatter. Up and down, like the turning of the waves. The little heartbeat of the world.  
  
The Mule followed the song to the spider web in the rafters.  
  
An old, fat Spider in the center nodded down to her. He played bass with three legs and ate a housefly po’ boy with another, while three more busied themselves writing on little scratches of paper. He waved with the last leg. “Evening, Mule. The name’s Granddaddy Longlegs.”  
  
“Evening, old man.” said the Mule said. “I hope life’s treating you nice.”  
  
“Could be better.” The Spider shrugged. “My old lady’s on my case about alimony, been calling me lazy and no-good. Every day it’s ‘Why you sitting in my web? Why ain’t you out getting flies?’ Nag, nag, nag.” He paused to glance down at the Mule. “No offence to your mamma.”  
  
“None taken.”  
  
“Anyway, I figure I best get all my playing done while I can. My old lady’s gonna eat me any day, I expect.” He finished his sandwich and swung down on a long, silver thread. “I heard your singing, Sister Mule. You’re good, and you know what I think? I think you can make it in Harlem, if only—”  
  
The Mule’s long, pretty ears drooped. “Yeah, yeah. If only I had something original.”  
  
“Hell no!” cried Granddaddy Longlegs. “Ain’t _nothing_ in the whole world’s original no more! There’s only about eight stories in all Creation, and all of them’s been told already. What matters is _how_ you tell it and there’s a million ways to do that. Trust me, sister, I’ve been around and I know.”  
  
The Spider swung off his thread and onto the Mule’s nose. He held up his little bits of paper close to her eye so that she could see his little tiny music sheets. “I was going to say what you need is a lyricist. See, I know how to spin stories, and you know how to sing them. You dig me?”  
  
“A partnership.” The Mule had intended a solo career, but hearing that sweet bassline had her on the way to changing her mind. Every singer needed a band, after all. “Yes. Yes, that might just work.”  
  
The Spider dropped on the Mule’s head and kicked up his heels. “Also, I want a seventy-percent cut.”  
  
The Mule would have laughed in his face if he wasn’t riding on her head. “Fifty.”  
  
“Sixty-five.”  
  
“Fifty.”  
  
Longlegs frowned. “…Sixty?”  
  
The Mule shook her head. “Fifty.”  
  
“Aw, fine. Fifty it is.”  
  
They shook on it and by morning, they were on their way to Harlem.  
  


* * *

  
Now, it was a couple of days into their journey, when the Mule and the Spider heard a terrible commotion coming from a nearby cornfield.  
  
Shots rang out into the sunset— ** _Pop! Pop!_** —and a great black cloud of crows exploded into the red sky.  
  
 _ **Pop!**_  
  
_**Pop!**_  
  
_**Pop!**_  
  
Feathers and bodies fell like rain.  
  
Granddaddy Longlegs climbed up to the tips of the Mule’s ears to have a look around.  
  
“Look,” he said. “Out by those yonder cottonwoods.” He pointed towards the woods.  
Great swirls of white fire drifted out of the trees and over the cornstalks, wailing something awful. They twisted over the feathered bodies and lit the grass with a pale, eerie light.  
  
The Mule’s knees shook. “Ghosts.” She’d heard plenty of stories about the Ghosts, but this was the first time she’d seen any. For the first time, she wondered if maybe the Thoroughbred was right and she ought to go home.  
  
“Glad it ain’t us,” said Longlegs. When the Mule glared at him, he added, “I’m sorrowful for the murder of crows, but still. Glad it ain’t us. You were thinking it too, so don’t even lie.”  
  
A long, high note sounded above the travelers.  
  
The Spider put down his bass and lifted one of his many hands to his ear. “Say, you hear that?”  
  
The Mule nodded. “It sounds like a trumpet. But who’d be playing trumpet now, of all times?”  
  
The note climbed higher and higher, up and up and up, until it swooped down into a melody so jubilant and fierce it made the branches shake and the bottles clatter. It sounded like whiskey and thunder. Like Heaven broke a beer bottle over the Devil’s skull, looking for a fight.  
  
They looked up to discover a Crow perched in a bottle tree, all raggedy feathered and blowing her trumpet harder than Gabriel calling for the end times. A great and joyous sound in the darkening branches.  
  
“Sister Crow!” The Mule called. “How can your horn sound so happy? Those are your kin, shouldn’t you be playing Taps?”  
  
“Not on your life, Mule.” The Crow hopped down the bottle tree, and her feet went clink clink on the glass. “You play Taps when you’ve lost and we are not yet lost.” She gripped the trumpet hard in her black claws. “I’m alive. I’m making sure they know. That flock up there in the sky? They are alive, too. We’re alive and we’re here.”  
  
She put the trumpet to her beak and another peal ripped into the sky. “And we ain’t afraid of no ghosts.”  
  
Granddaddy Longlegs thought being afraid of ghosts was perfectly sensible, seeing as how they were made of fire and all. “Far be it from me to start telling folks how they should hold their funerals. She got a nice sound, don’t she?”  
  
The Mule nodded. More importantly, she couldn’t hear the ghostly wailing anymore. The trumpet drowned it out and shouted it down.  
  
One by one, the fiery specters dimmed into the Spanish moss until the only light left was the soft, natural glow of the moon.  
  
Sister Crow puffed all her feathers and grinned. “It’s ghosts that are scared of me.”   
  
“I’ve got to hand it to you, Sister Crow.” Granddaddy Longlegs put all his hands in his pockets and had to laugh. “You got some powerful talent.”  
  
“Listen,” said the Mule. “I’m a singer, Longlegs here is my bass player, and we’re moving on up to Harlem. Why don’t you join the band and come with us?”  
  
The Crow cleaned her spit valve, taking her time to think about it. “Harlem, huh?” Her stomach growled. “I could use some extra cheddar. It’s been slim pickings, and I can’t live on music alone. But I don’t know…”  
  
“They’ve got radio stations and record producers up in Harlem.” Granddaddy Longlegs spun pictures of neon lights, broadcast towers, and royally checks. “Just think about it. If—”  
The Mule frowned. “When.”  
  
“When we make it big in Harlem, folks are gonna hear your trumpet from here to Memphis and then some.”  
  
Sister Crow nodded to herself. “And most everybody’s got radio these days. There won’t be a single place for them ghosts to hide from me!” With a righteous caw, she flew to the Mule’s shoulders. “Onward, to Harlem!”

* * *

  
  
Once upon a time, folks all over the country tramped over each other just for a chance to get a ticket for The Robbers Three. Now the only ones looking for Robber tickets were squares and their grandmas. People know good music when they hear it, whether they’re furred, feathered, or finned, and soon the good word got around about The Harlem Club Musicians.  
  
Six months and too many miles to count after the Mule left her fields, the band had a spring to their step and real weight in their wallets.  
  
They came upon a city lit up like Christmastime seven days a week, twelve months a year. Steel towers clawed for the clouds and everybody moved like they had someplace important to be.  
  
Soon as they arrived, the papers wrote stories and Parrots chased them down for interviews. Mule bought herself a new silk hat full of flowers and Sister Crow took herself to the salon and made her feathers smooth and glossy.  
  
Folks started asking about them.  
  
Agents sent them letters, but when the time came to sign, Sister Crow never liked the look of the contracts and suggested they make mixtapes instead. The clubs went from rickety holes in the wall to ballrooms, complete with crystal chandeliers and trash-talking socialites. They still had to use the back entrance—whoever heard of animals using the front door?—but they played them all the same.  
  
People blocked up traffic when The Musicians played street shows. Police started telling them they were a safety hazard. Bars and dives and clubs stretched so full, folks started sitting in the rafters. The fire departments started telling The Musicians they were a fire hazard. Gaggles of pretty girls followed the Spider to his hotel room and before long Sister Crow started calling him a marriage hazard.  
  
“The Robbers Three?” asked the DJs. “Who’s that?” The radio waves belonged to The Harlem Club Musicians. It was their house now.  
  
“It’s all very nice,” the Mule observed. “But it’s still not Harlem.”  
  
Now, it was one summer afternoon, after a matinee show at the Cotton Club, when the Musicians came across a magnificent garden under glass. They’d never seen a place so green, and so it seemed fitting the sign called it a greenhouse.  
  
Tomatoes grew bigger than the Crow’s whole body and the scent of syrupy-sweet crushed grapes lingered in the air.  
  
“Somebody’s making wine!” said Granddaddy Longlegs.  
  
Smoke rose from a little chimney in back.  
  
Sister Crow started drooling. “Somebody’s roasting corn.”  
  
A commotion of barking lifted the Mule’s ears. She turned to look and said, “Somebody’s making a break for it.”  
  
Sure enough, just when the barking got so loud a soul could hardly stand it, out ran a fugitive. The bony Rabbit burst out of the briar patch of roses, over the wall, and squeezed through the fence. Blood ran from his torn-up ear, and he dragged a gunny sack behind him.  
  
He caught his breath and met eyes with the Musicians no more than a heartbeat before he took off quick as his legs could carry him.  
  
A blink later, the gates opened. Waves and waves of Hounds surged into the street, scratching at the pavement, sniffing in the dirt, howling at the sky. God, it was an awful racket!  
  
Just when The Musicians were about to make themselves scarce, the Lead Hound cut off the Mule. “Which way?!” Foam dripped from his snarling jowls. “Which way did he go?!”  
  
“Who’re you talking about?” the Mule asked. “We seen lots of folks around today, it’s the vacation season.”  
  
“The thief!” screamed a Foxhound.  
  
“How do we know if he was a thief?” asked Granddaddy Longlegs.  
  
“The pest!” cried a Basset.  
  
Sister Crow flew to a streetlight, glaring down. “No pests ‘round here, mister.”  
  
“I don’t believe you.” The Lead Hound glared back at the Crow, twice as mean. “Pests always lie for pests.”  
  
“Yes, always!” howled the rest of the Hounds. “Always, always! Pests! Thieves! Vermin! Vermin everywhere!” They stirred themselves into such an awful frenzy that The Musicians worried the Hounds might forget their quarry and start biting anybody with the misfortune of breathing where Hounds were breathing.  
  
Granddaddy Longlegs sighed and held up his hands. “Look, fellas, just chill.”  
  
The Mule nodded. “How’re we supposed to tell y’all anything with you’re making such a fuss? Who are you looking for? What’s his name?”  
  
“Rabbit!” The Hounds all howled at once. “Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit!”  
  
“There!” Sister Crow cawed. “My Lord, that’s all you had to say.”  
  
“No, sirs. We seen no Rabbits today.” The Spider put all his hands to his chest. “On my ex-wife’s grave.”  
  
The Lead Hound scratched his collar and it made the tags of his Bosses jingle like new money. “Thank you anyway,” he said to the Mule. “Oh, and Mule, a word of advice: lose the riffraff before you get back to your Boss. It’s a bad look for you.”  
  
“I don’t have a Boss,” the Mule said. “I’m my own.”  
  
The pack of Hounds tilted their heads to the side and stared like she was speaking tongues.  
  
“We’re a band, see?” Sister Crow showed off her trumpet, still giving off sour looks.  
  
“Making money on our way to Harlem.”  
  
“Would you like to hear our mix-tape?” asked Granddaddy Longlegs.  
  
The Hounds looked at each other. They looked at the Musicians. They left laughing their tails off. “What a sense of humor!”  
  
The laughter and commotion faded into the night, leaving the Musicians alone with the night and their hurt feelings.  
  
“It’ll be better in Harlem,” the Mule said to her bandmates.  
  
The Rabbit’s head peaked out from behind a stack of milk crates. He reached his head around, twitching his nose and watching with his big pop-out eyes. Convinced the Hounds weren’t on stakeout, he showed himself.   
  
“Say, that’s good looking out.” He pulled some briar thorns out of his fur and smoothed out his suede jacket. “I owe you one.”  
  
“Well, y’all just went by so fast I thought your name was Hare. Just a case of mistaken identity,” said Granddaddy Longlegs. He winked two pairs of eyes. “Ain’t no thing, little brother.”  
  
“Yeah,” said the Mule. “I’m you’d have done the same thing.”  
  
“…Right.” The Rabbit glanced to the side, smoothing out his whiskers. “Sure I would. Us pests gotta stick together, right?”  
  
“You better quit that pest talk. I’m no pest and neither are you.” Sister Crow’s feathers flared out so much she looked like the business end of a chimney brush. “You know the only reason the Bosses call us pests?”  
  
Granddaddy Longlegs banged his fists in his palms. “Arachnophobia!”  
  
“Well…maybe. But it’s mostly ‘cause we don’t do nothin’ for Bosses and we get by on our own. They don’t like it one bit. Some get themself so worked up about it they just up and die from spite.” She nodded to herself, resolute and firm. “That’s how you get ghosts.”  
  
The Rabbit went to picking through his sack of loot. “If you say so, sister.” He pulled out a fat hunk of cabbage and bit into it. Little bits of green spat over the pavement when he spoke. “But I don’t think it matters if a person calls himself a pest or preacher, it don’t stop the Hounds from eatin’ you alive. That’s if the Foxes don’t get you first.”  
  
The Mule nodded. “I know what you mean. That’s why all of us struck out for better times and better places with our music.”  
  
Granddaddy Longlegs reached into the Mule’s pack and offered a mixtape to the Rabbit.  
  
The Rabbit opened his suede jacket to show off the tape in his pocket. “Already got one. Some Gator in Morningside was selling some. You’re not bad, but you know, when I was sittin’ in the park listening I say to myself ‘Rabbit, this is some fresh stuff, but it’s missing something.’” He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a pair of drumsticks. “A rhythm section!”  
  
Granddaddy Longlegs crossed three pairs of arms as the Rabbit gave a live drum solo demonstration. “We already have a rhythm section.”  
  
“But drums aren’t the same as bass, Longlegs,” pointed out the Mule. “Besides, it’s better to earn an honest living than robbing greenhouses.”  
  
“It’s a good solo,” Sister Crow had to admit.  
  
Granddaddy Longlegs grumbled under his breath. The Crow was right, but he’d be damned if he admitted to it.  
  
After a quick vote and dinner at a hotdog cart, it became official. One drummer richer, The Musicians played a night show at The Cotton Club one last time and hit the road once again the next morning.

* * *

  
The Mule had missed the road. It was hard on her knees some days, but still easier than dragging a plow. The glistening chandeliers became a distant memory before long, and though she missed the beds made of eiderdown, the stars shined prettier. They didn’t burn out, and nobody fussed at her about which door to use.  
  
“You ever notice the way them fancy audiences looked at us?” she asked one day.  
  
“I noticed the money they put in my pocket,” said the Rabbit. He leaned back in the Mule’s pack, letting his big, smelly feet bounce over the sides. “That suited me just fine.”  
  
The Mule admitted, “Oh, that part suited me fine, too.” She still loved her new hat. It kept the sun out of her eyes and smelled like violets. “And they all clapped and were very polite.”  
  
“They wrote about us, too,” said Sister Crow. “Nice things, usually. But I feel you, Mule. Some nights I’d feel like queen of the world one second and bearded lady the next.” She clapped her wings and caught a warm updraft high into the blue. “Yes sir, this is the stuff. Got some real room to stretch.”  
  
Granddaddy Longlegs nodded. “You know what I dug? That little ratty place we played last night. The one with all the Rats cooking up yam and cheddar pies.” He idly spun a nice portrait of the club, prettier than the web he’d left behind. “It ain’t the Ritz, but it had charm. Dark and cozy, like knotholes.”  
  
The Mule had to agree. “Them Rats could dance, too. I couldn’t feel my feet this morning. It was a nice place. I wonder if it’s anything like Harlem.”  
  
The Rabbit tilted his ears. He sat up and gave the Mule a funny look. “What kind of craziness you talking, girl? That wasn’t like Harlem at all.”  
  
“True,” said Sister Crow. “Harlem’s probably better.”  
  
The Rabbit rolled his eyes, yawning. “Look, I know it’s funny to mess with the new guy, but it’s real early and I’ve got a handover.” He wrinkled his wiggly little nose. “Y’all need to quit playin’.”  
  
“She’s not,” said the Spider.  
  
“Harlem’s where we’re headed,” said the Crow. “It’s a nice place.”  
  
“Well, you weren’t saying that a couple minutes ago.” The Rabbit hopped out of the bag and on Mule’s shoulder, looking at the band like they’d been huffing paint. “And you  
didn’t like it enough to stay.”  
  
The Mule stared back at him. Granddaddy Longlegs came down from her ears and stared with her. Sister Crow came in for a landing and joined them.  
  
“What do you mean?” they all asked.  
  
The Rabbit laughed. “For real?” He shook his head and laughed even harder. “Man, that WAS Harlem!”  
  
“No it wasn’t,” said the Mule. “It couldn’t be. Harlem’s a sweet place, full of music.”  
  
“Well, it did have music.” The Crow rubbed her beak in thought. “It’s just we were the ones playing it.”  
  
“But the place had Hounds!” cried the Mule. “It had shifty contracts and hardship.”  
  
The Rabbit shrugged. “Look, I dunno what to tell you, but trust me, that was Harlem. I’ve been living there longer than I can remember. And every place—”  
  
“…Has got hardship,” the Mule finished.  
  
The other Musicians had to admit their drummer had a point.  
  
“Still,” said Longlegs, “Life’s not as hard as it used to be.”  
  
“Mmm, it is nice,” added Sister Crow. “Better than it ever was, in fact.”  
  
The Mule felt the breeze ripple through her mane. “And it’s been a long time since I felt this happy,” she said. “You know, I heard of this swinging joint a couple miles west of here. Why don’t we give them a taste of what The Harlem Club Musicians have to offer?”  
  
“Lets!” agreed her bandmates. They moved on down the road, more eager than they’d ever been.  
  
It was a funny thing about happiness, they decided. It didn’t just stick to one place. It stuck to them, instead.  
  
“But should we really be called ‘Harlem Club Musicians’?” Sister Crow wondered. “I mean, most of us don’t come from there, and we ain’t headed there.”  
  
“True,” said the Mule. “But that’s our name, and we’re keeping it.”


End file.
